Stamp Duty & Registration Charges 2026: 7 Metro Cities Compared

There is a number missing from almost every home-buying budget in India, and it is not a small one. On a ₹1 crore flat, it ranges from ₹6 lakh to ₹11 lakh depending on which city you're buying in. Your bank will not lend you a rupee of it. And most buyers discover its true size a few weeks before registration, at the exact moment they have the least room to plan for it.

Stamp duty and registration charges are the price of making your ownership legally real — the state's fee for recording that the property is now yours. Unlike nearly everything else in a property transaction, they are non-negotiable, non-financeable, and due in full, upfront. This guide covers what you'll actually pay in 2026 across India's seven big metro markets, why the value the duty is charged on matters as much as the rate, and the handful of legal ways to pay less.

One caveat before the numbers: stamp duty is state law, and states revise both rates and the underlying benchmark values — sometimes mid-year. The figures below reflect the position as of mid-2026; before you register, verify the current rate on your state's official portal (listed against each state below) or run your numbers through our calculator, which we keep current.

https://www.joinekatra.com/calculators/stamp-duty

First, the rule that determines what you actually pay

Every state charges duty on the higher of two numbers: the price in your agreement, or the government's benchmark value for that property — called the ready reckoner rate in Maharashtra, guidance value in Karnataka, circle rate in Delhi and Haryana, guideline value in Tamil Nadu, market value in Telangana.

This rule has two practical consequences. First, you cannot reduce duty by writing a lower price into the agreement — the benchmark value floors it, and under-reporting additionally invites income tax trouble for both buyer and seller on the difference. Second, when a state revises benchmark values upward, your duty bill rises even though the advertised rate didn't move. Telangana did exactly this in June 2026, raising market values 30–50% across the state — buyers' effective costs jumped while the "6%" headline stayed put. Watch the benchmark, not just the rate.

The seven metros, compared

For a ₹1 crore urban residential purchase in 2026:

A few things jump out of that table.

Chennai is in a league of its own. Tamil Nadu's 7% duty plus a 4% registration fee — the highest in the country — makes the state charge on a ₹1 crore home ₹11 lakh, nearly double Hyderabad's. Tamil Nadu also offers no meaningful concession for women on metro-priced homes (a reduced registration fee exists only for properties up to ₹10 lakh).

The gender gap is real money in the North. Delhi charges women 4% against men's 6%; Haryana 5% against 7%; Maharashtra gives a 1% concession; UP (relevant for Noida buyers) extended its 1% women's rebate to properties up to ₹1 crore in 2025. Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai offer effectively nothing. Where the concession exists, registering in the wife's sole name saves ₹1–2 lakh on a ₹1 crore purchase — note that in Maharashtra and Delhi's schedules, a joint male-female registration typically forfeits part or all of the concession, so check the exact schedule before deciding how to structure ownership.

Bengaluru got more expensive recently, quietly. Karnataka doubled its registration fee from 1% to 2% in August 2025 — the first revision in over two decades — pushing all-in costs to about 7.6%. Nothing about the headline 5% stamp rate changed, which is exactly why headline rates mislead.

Hyderabad is the value buy, for now. 6% all-in is the lowest of the six — but the June 2026 market-value revision means the base that 6% applies to just rose sharply, especially in prime areas.

Where to verify and pay, state by state: Maharashtra uses the GRAS portal with the IGR Maharashtra e-registration system; Karnataka runs everything through Kaveri; Telangana through its e-STAMPS/IGRS portal; Delhi mandates e-stamping through SHCIL; Tamil Nadu uses TNREGINET; Haryana uses e-GRAS with registration via the Jamabandi portal. Physical stamp paper is functionally dead for property transactions in the metros — it's e-challans and e-stamps everywhere.

The part your bank won't tell you at sanction

Here is where stamp duty intersects with your home loan, and it's the reason we're writing about it at all.

Banks do not finance stamp duty and registration. This isn't bank stinginess — it's an RBI rule. For any home costing more than ₹10 lakh, lenders are required to exclude stamp duty, registration and documentation charges when computing the property's cost for loan-to-value purposes. The LTV caps — up to 90% for loans under ₹30 lakh, 80% up to ₹75 lakh, 75% above that — apply to the property's cost before these charges.

Run the arithmetic on a ₹1 crore purchase in Pune. Maximum loan: ₹75 lakh. Your margin money: ₹25 lakh. Stamp duty and registration: another ₹7.3 lakh. Interiors, movers, society deposits: more still. The real upfront cash requirement is ₹33–35 lakh — a third more than the "25% down payment" most buyers budget for. In Chennai it's ₹36 lakh+. Buyers who discover this late end up doing exactly the wrong things: draining emergency funds, taking a personal loan at 11–14% for the duty, or — the classic — accepting whatever home loan lender the builder recommends because there's no time left to compare, a mistake that costs far more over twenty years than the duty itself, as we showed in the EMI reduction guide.

Budget the duty on day one, not at registration week. It changes which city, which ownership structure, and which loan size actually fit your finances. If you're still weighing whether to buy at all, this ₹6–11 lakh transaction cost is also a real input into the rent-versus-buy decision — it's one of the reasons buying only beats renting over longer holding periods:

https://www.joinekatra.com/calculators/rent-vs-buy

The legal ways to pay less

There are exactly four, and none of them involve creative pricing.

1. Register in a woman's name, where the state rewards it. Delhi: 2 percentage points saved. Haryana: 2 points. Maharashtra: 1 point. The property must genuinely be hers — this is an ownership decision with succession and tax consequences, not a billing trick. Structure it honestly or not at all.

2. Claim the 80C deduction — if you're on the old tax regime. Stamp duty and registration fees qualify under Section 80C in the year of payment, within the ₹1.5 lakh overall cap, for a new residential house. Two honest caveats: the cap is shared with your EPF, insurance premiums and home loan principal — which usually consume it already — and the deduction doesn't exist in the new regime, which is where most salaried taxpayers now sit. Details in our home loan tax benefits guide.

3. Time purchases around benchmark-value revisions — when you can. States revise ready reckoner / guidance / market values periodically, almost always upward. Telangana's June 2026 revision is the live example: an agreement registered in May cost meaningfully less duty than the identical one in July. You can't control revision calendars, but if one has been announced and you're weeks away from registering, registering before it takes effect is real money.

4. Don't over-stamp by category error. Duty schedules differ by instrument — gift deeds to close family, for example, attract heavily concessional duty in Maharashtra, Telangana and Karnataka. If property is moving within a family, a sale deed is often the wrong, expensive instrument. Take proper legal advice on the deed type before defaulting to sale.

And one non-way, stated plainly: under-stamping is not a strategy. An under-stamped document is inadmissible as evidence, blocks mutation, and when caught — increasingly automatic in the e-stamping era — attracts the deficit plus penalties that run at 2% per month, capped in most states at 200–400% of the shortfall. You'd be risking the legal validity of your largest asset to dodge a fee whose penalty is multiples of the fee.

What this means for balance transfers — a note for existing borrowers

A question we get on nearly every refinance audit: "will I pay stamp duty again if I switch banks?" The reassuring answer — no. You already own the property; a balance transfer re-mortgages it, it doesn't re-convey it. What you pay instead is stamp duty on the mortgage deed (memorandum of deposit of title deeds), which in most states runs 0.1–0.5% of the loan amount, often capped — thousands of rupees, not lakhs. It's part of the ₹35,000–70,000 all-in switching cost we've quoted before, and it's why a 75+ basis point rate gap comfortably justifies a transfer. Don't let anyone — least of all a retention desk — imply you'd face purchase-scale duty to switch lenders.

Frequently asked questions

Can stamp duty be added to my home loan?

For homes above ₹10 lakh, no — the RBI requires lenders to exclude stamp duty and registration charges from the property cost when sizing the loan. The narrow exception is low-cost housing up to ₹10 lakh, where these charges may be included. Budget duty as upfront cash.

Is stamp duty the same for resale and new properties?

Yes — the conveyance attracts the same duty either way. The difference is GST: an under-construction purchase attracts GST (1% affordable / 5% other residential) in addition to stamp duty, while a completed resale purchase attracts no GST. Stamp duty is never replaced by GST.

Who pays stamp duty — buyer or seller?

The buyer, by convention and in practice, since the buyer needs the registered deed. It's payable at or before registration of the sale deed.

What happens if I register the property below the circle rate?

The registrar will charge duty on the circle/benchmark value regardless. If the agreement price is genuinely below the benchmark, both buyer and seller can also face income tax on the difference under anti-under-reporting provisions. If you believe the benchmark overvalues the property, states provide an appeal process — use that, not a lower declared price.

Do women get stamp duty concessions everywhere in India?

No. Delhi (4% vs 6%), Haryana (5% vs 7%), Maharashtra (1% off) and UP (1% rebate up to ₹1 crore) reward female ownership. Karnataka, Telangana and Tamil Nadu charge everyone the same at metro price points.

Is stamp duty refundable if the deal falls through?

Partially, in most states — if the deed was never executed or registered, you can apply for a refund of duty paid, minus a deduction, within a state-specific window (often six months). Registration fees are generally not refunded. File promptly; the windows are strict.

Related reading

• The Complete Home Loan Guide for India in 2026
• Home Loan Tax Benefits in 2026: What Still Works
• The Complete Guide to Home Loan Balance Transfer in India
• How to Actually Reduce Your Home Loan EMI
• The Home Loan Glossary: every term, in plain language

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Ekatra is a free, AI-native home loan management platform built for India's middle-class borrowers. We don't take commissions from lenders — which is why our numbers, including the unfinanceable ones like stamp duty, are the numbers you'd want a friend in banking to give you. Visit joinekatra.com to start the diagnostic for your loan.